Signal strength excellent in West Germany: Radio Tirana, European Maoist internationalism and its disintegration in the global seventies

ABSTRACT

That the European protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s were marked by transnational connections, mobilities and interactions is now widely accepted. This article takes two West German Maoist parties and their multi-layered transnational connections as a vantage point from which to explore the role that Albania and its Cold War broadcaster, Radio Tirana, played in establishing transnational Maoism as a global language of protest able to accommodate a wide variety of political causes in the aftermath of decolonization. Looking at transnationalism in different modes – understood here as different conceptual spaces – reveals that Maoist transnationalism was highly uneven. The article argues that the global Cold War both created the conditions under which China and Albania could become the centre of global Maoism and undermined the ideological coherence of Maoism. As the Sino-Albanian alliance began to unravel, Maoism as a global space of belonging also became increasingly fractured, although the effects of disintegration were again uneven: broadcasting and the circulation of Maoist knowledge continued – even expanded – while Maoism as a plausible politics in the Global North increasingly faded into the background.

KEYWORDS:

• Maoism
• Europe
• West Germany
• global Cold War
• decolonization
• radio

Acknowledgements

I thank the two anonymous reviewers for much-valued feedback on the manuscript, Elidor Mëhilli for suggestions on an earlier draft and directing my attention to a key source, Sokol Çunga for his help navigating the Albanian State Archives in Tirana, Kevin Shani for translating from Albanian, and Julia Sittmann for editing the entire manuscript. Johanna Folland has helped me think through many iterations of this work and her own thinking on the Cold War has left a deep mark on the project this article draws on. I have also benefitted from conversations with Astrit Ibro at Radio Televizioni Shqiptar and numerous former activists, and I thank them all.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Letter: A. Katharina [anonymized], Zentrale Organisationsabteilung der KPD/ML to the Albanian Party of Labour (no date), Arkivi Qendror Shtetëror (Central State Archives of the Republic of Albania, AQSh hereafter), Fondi (f.) 14/APMP, Marrëdhëniet me Partinë Komuniste të Gjermanisë M-L (KPD/ML hereafter), Viti (v.) 1972, Dosja (d.) 5, 2. Unless otherwise indicated, [anonymized] refers to anonymization by me.

2. Letter: A. Katharina [anonymized], Zentrale Organisationsabteilung der KPD/ML to the Albanian Party of Labour (no date).

3. “Lebenslauf [Fred],” (1972), AQSh f. 14/APMP, KPD/ML, v. 1972, d. 5, 3.

4. Letter: [Anonymized], Zentrale Organisationsabteilung der KPD/ML to the Albanian Party of Labour (no date).

5. “Lebenslauf [Claudia],” (1972), AQSh f. 14/APMP, KPD/ML, v. 1972, d. 5, 5.

6. The KPD/ML had about 300 members in 1973 and about 800 full party members in 1978. As a rule, estimates are notoriously difficult both because of the secretive nature of the party and because membership figures usually exclude members in the various affiliated mass organizations of the parties. For the estimates given here, as well as estimates on the other major Maoist parties in West Germany, see Probst, “Die Kommunistischen Parteien der Bundesrepublik Deutschland.” Probst lists 2500 members for the KBW but acknowledges that this doesn’t include the members of its factory cells, of which there were 160 in 1975; nor of its cells within the military; nor membership of any of its so-called mass organizations. This problem extends beyond Germany. A. Belden Fields justifies his own disproportionate focus on the so-called anti-hierarchical Maoism of the French Gauche Prolétarienne with the difficulty of obtaining sources from the more conspiratorial and hierarchical parties. See Fields, Trotskyism and Maoism, 87. West German intelligence estimated that in 1975, there were about 10,000–15,000 active Maoists in Germany. See Brown, West Germany and the Global Sixties, 253–4. For the whole decade of the 1970s, one writer claims that up to 100,000 people may have gone through one of West Germany’s Maoist parties or its many mass organizations. Koenen, Das rote Jahrzehnt, 18.

7. For an encyclopaedic overview of Maoist parties in North America, Europe, Oceania and Japan, see Alexander, Maoism in the Developed World. In almost every case, a minority sided with the Albanians after the Sino-Albanian Split. The role of the Albanians in these networks was also not lost on contemporary observers. In the 1970s, a former employee of the West German Ministry of Defence co-authored an incredibly detailed book on Western European Maoists as part of China’s European strategy. Much of the first part of the book is dedicated to publishing and broadcasting operations in Beijing and Tirana and their distribution networks through embassies across Europe. See Schlomann and Friedlingstein, Die Maoisten: Pekings Filialen in Westeuropa.

8. On the relationship between Grippa and the Albanian Party of Labour, see Marku, “Stories from the International Communist Movement.” For an earlier account of Grippa’s political trajectory, see Bourseiller, Les Maoïstes, 49–54.

9. Gnoinska, “Promoting the ‘China Way’ of Communism in Poland and beyond during the Sino-Soviet Split,” 349.

10. In part, this may have been because of disagreements about what role China and Albania should play in organizing a Maoist international abroad. While China sought to support pro-Chinese splinter parties around the world, Albania pushed for the organization of a rival bloc to the Soviet bloc. See Biberaj, Albania and China, 63. However, there is also evidence (including the Albanian embassy’s facilitation of connections to the Chinese state in Poland) that there was a certain division of labour with respect to the splinter parties. According to Ylber Marku, China provided Albania with significant funds to support the activities of anti-Soviet communist parties in Europe. See Marku, “Stories from the International Communist Movement,” 2.

11. See Lovell, Maoism; Cook, Mao’s Little Red Book. For Maoism in Argentina, see Mignon and Fishwick, “Origins and Evolution of Maoism in Argentina, 1968–1971.” For Maoist activity in East Germany, see Slobodian, “Badge Books and Brand Books: The Mao Bible in East and West Germany”; Slobodian, “The Maoist Enemy”; Wunschik, Die maoistische KPD/ML und die Zerschlagung ihrer ‘Sektion DDR’ durch das MfS. For France, see Bourseiller, Les Maoïstes; Fields, Trotskyism and Maoism.

12. As Odd Arne Westad points out, ‘Vietnamese resistance to the United States inspired not only Third World radicals but also – for the first time – made the Cold War in the Third World a central part of left-wing mobilization within the pan-European world itself.’ See Westad, The Global Cold War, 192. Julia Lovell similarly argued that while Ho Chi Minh enjoyed the prestige of waging war against the United States, the Vietnamese guerrilla tactics were widely seen to have been pioneered by Mao. See Lovell, Maoism, 276. When China appeared to apply Mao’s strategy of organizing the peasants in the countryside to ‘encircle the cities’ to the world-political stage – insisting that the United States and Europe were the world’s cities – Maoism provided a framing whereby the anti-colonial struggles in the Global South could yield emancipatory and revolutionary potential for the Global North. See Jian, “China, the Third World, and the Cold War.” On Sino-Soviet competition in the Global South, see Friedman, Shadow Cold War.

13. This seems to have been the case for the Black Panther Party in the United States. See Kelley and Esch, “Black like Mao.” Similarly, Sebastian Gehrig has argued for an understanding of West German terrorism as Maoist on this basis. See Gehrig, “Zwischen uns und dem Feind einen klaren Trennungsstrich ziehen.” For an argument about the inspiration female members of the Baader-Meinhof Group found in women’s participation in the Algerian War, see Melzer, Death in the Shape of a Young Girl, particularly chapter 1.

14. For the centrality of the ‘investigation’ or enquête to French Maoism, see Bourg, “The Red Guards of Paris.” For factory interventions in West Germany, see Arps, Frühschicht. For a broader view tracing multiple sources for the practice of ‘investigation’ on the Left, see Hoffman, Militant Acts.

15. See Frazier, The East Is Black. Robin Kelley and Betsy Esch have argued that the entire conflict over Black nationalism or internationalism can be understood as an intra-Maoist conflict. See Kelley and Esch, “Black like Mao.”

16. This is especially true in the French case, where the vast majority of the attention has been focused on the Gauche Prolétarienne, in large part because of the impact the GP milieux had on key intellectuals of the post-war period. On this topic, see Bourg, “The Red Guards of Paris”; Bourg, “Principally Contradiction”; Bourg, From Revolution to Ethics; Robcis, “China in Our Heads”; Wolin, The Wind from the East. In the West German case, writing on the Maoist cadre organizations of the 1970s has largely been left to the, often regretful, narratives of former activists – a literature Quinn Slobodian has aptly termed ‘mea culpa Maoism.’ See Slobodian, “The Meanings of Western Maoism.” For some examples, see Aly, Unser Kampf; Jasper, Der gläserne Sarg; Koenen, Das rote Jahrzehnt; Kräuter, So ist die Revolution, mein Freund.

17. On the role of the friendship associations in creating European-Chinese networks, see Cordoba and Kaixuan, “Unconditional Followers of the PRC?”

18. The East German Ministry for State Security had been observing the Albanian and Chinese embassies in East Berlin and their connections to West German activists since the 1960s. See, for example, “Anhang zur periodischen Berichterstattung für den Zeitraum vom 1.5.-30.6.1969 zu speziellen Problemen der politisch-operativen Arbeit der HA XX/2,” Bundesarchiv (BArch hereafter), MfS, HA XX, Nr. 11054.

19. Davis, “A Whole World Opening Up”; Klimke, The Other Alliance; Jian et al., The Routledge Handbook of the Global Sixties; Christiansen and Scarlett, The Third World in the Global 1960s; Brown, West Germany and the Global Sixties. For a transnational account of political violence in Europe, see Terhoeven, Deutscher Herbst in Europa. See also the first chapter of Melzer, Death in the Shape of a Young Girl.

20. This article is part of the project ‘Imagined Transnationalism? Mapping Transnational Spaces of Political Activism in Europe’s Long 1970s’, published as a special issue of European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire.

21. With respect to the literature on European Maoism and ‘Third Worldism’, it can be said that those accounts that have primarily understood those phenomena as the projection of the hopes and dreams of European radicals onto the Global South have disproportionately focused on spaces of solidarity and belonging but neglected the other two. See most importantly Wolin, The Wind from the East. Similarly, at the other extreme, accounts that overemphasize personal encounters or ‘spaces of interaction’ have provided a necessary corrective, but at the expense of the tremendous amount of friction produced between the three spaces described here. This includes Quinn Slobodian’s important interventions in Slobodian, Foreign Front.

22. Given the emphasis here on the different spatial dimensions of global Maoism as it was mediated through Albania, this article does not go into detail about the intellectual history of Maoism. There are now many accounts of the differences between the various German groups. Among others, see Kühn, Stalins Enkel, Maos Söhne; Benicke, Von Adorno Zu Mao; Benicke, Die K-Gruppen; Stengl, Zur Geschichte der ‘K-Gruppen’; Steffen, Geschichten Vom Trüffelschwein. For a short overview of the different organizations in English, see Markovits and Gorski, The German Left, 59–65. For an account of how the West German Maoist cadre parties of the 1970s grew out of the 1960s student movement, see Brown, West Germany and the Global Sixties, 234–85.

23. For an argument about ‘transnational intermediaries’ in West German activism, see Tompkins, “Grassroots Transnationalism(s).” The language of ‘cultural brokerage’ is more common to the study of empire and migration. Compare de Jong, “Brokerage and Transnationalism” and the introduction to Rodgers et al., Cultures in Motion. For an exception, see Bilecen and Faist, “International Doctoral Students as Knowledge Brokers.”

24. The one notable exception to this is Mëhilli, “Radio and Revolution.” Like this article, Mëhilli’s contribution emphasizes Radio Tirana’s role as a broadcaster that criss-crossed the Iron Curtain and disrupted the geographies of the Cold War. His focus is on the earlier years of the radio station and what it meant for Albania as an actor in the global Cold War. Examples of the extensive literature on Cold War broadcasting include Komska, “West Germany’s Cold War Radio: A Crucible of the Transatlantic Century [Special Issue]”; Risso, ed., “Radio Wars: Broadcasting during the Cold War [Special Issue]”; Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime Time; Johnson and Parta, Cold War Broadcasting; Badenoch, Fickers, and Henrich-Franke, Airy Curtains in the European Ether.

25. Moorman, “Airing the Politics of Nation.”

26. This does not mean that Maoism disappeared. On the contrary, while it lost its appeal in large parts of the Global North by the 1980s, Maoism remained a political force in Peru and parts of Asia. See Lovell, Maoism.

27. Letter: [anonymized] to Radio Tirana (July 26, 1968).

28. The literature on the Sino-Soviet split is vast and continues to grow. For a selection, see Chen, Mao’s China and the Cold War; Kuo, Contending with Contradictions; Li, “Ideological Dilemma”; Li, Mao’s China and the Sino-Soviet Split; Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split; Radchenko, Two Suns in the Heavens; Roberts et al., “Forum: Mao, Khrushchev, and China’s Split with the USSR”; Westad, Brothers in Arms; Zagoria, The Sino-Soviet Conflict. On Albania specifically, see Biberaj, Albania and China; Griffith, Albania and the Sino-Soviet Rift; Lalaj, Ostermann, and Gage, “Albania is not Cuba”; Marku, “Communist Relations in Crisis”; Mëhilli, “Defying De-Stalinization”; Mëhilli, From Stalin to Mao; and Selivanov, “Moscow–Hanoi–Tirana Relations in the Context of the Split in the Socialist Camp.”

29. Among Eastern Bloc officials, China’s rejection of ‘peaceful coexistence’ at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis caused great anxiety because it attracted sympathy for the Chinese challenge to Moscow among African and Asian students in the socialist world. See for example Bodie, “Global GDR?”

30. Mëhilli, “Defying De-Stalinization,” 37.

31. Ibid., 56.

32. Biberaj, Albania and China, 38–40.

33. Marku, “China and Albania,” 372–6. In the 1960s, Albania had its own Cultural Revolution. Despite similarities in ideological statements, it differed in significant respects from the Chinese campaign, and, more importantly, had begun years before the contours of the Chinese campaign would have become clear to the Albanians. See Mëhilli, From Stalin to Mao, 220; Marku, “China and Albania,” 378. See also Pano, “The Albanian Cultural Revolution.”

34. Marku, “China and Albania,” 382–3.

35. Mëhilli, From Stalin to Mao, 220. Public praise and private criticism seemed to go hand in hand throughout the 1960s. See Mëhilli, “Mao and the Albanians,” 173.

36. West German Maoist parties sought relations with the Chinese Communist Party with varying levels of success. For a short while beginning in the mid-1970s, the Communist League of West Germany had a ‘cell in Beijing,’ made up of a handful of West Germans who worked for China’s foreign language press and the international radio station, or provided language instruction. For an autobiographical account, see Kräuter, So ist die Revolution, mein Freund.

37. Letter: Erich [anonymized] to the Central Committee of the Albanian Party of Labour (August 1, 1964), AQSh, f. 14/APMP, KPD/ML, v. 1964, d. 1, 12.

38. Letter: Günther [anonymized] to the Publisher Naim Fasheri (August 21, 1967), AQSh, f. 14/APMP, KPD/ML, v. 1967, d. 1, 17. ‘Revisionisten – Rowdys – Renegaten,’ Die Wahrheit, No. 1, May 1967.

39. ‘Eine Hand am Gewehr – Die andere am Spaten,’ Die Wahrheit, No. 8, December 1967.

40. The Board for International Broadcasting, “1978 Annual Report,” 7.

41. Letters received by the foreign broadcasting section of Radio Tirana until 1980 are preserved in their original form accompanied by an Albanian translation at the Central State Archive in Tirana. See AQSh, f. 509.

42. “Die Marxistisch-Leninistische Weltbewegung wächst und erstarkt,” Ausgewählte Sendungen von Radio Tirana November/December 1971: 60–82.

43. “Duties performed by foreign comrades of the Radio” (August 20, 1973), AQSh, f. 14/STR, v. 1974, d. 562, 2–3.

44. Letter: Ingvar [anonymized] to Radiodiffusion Television Albanaise (July 11, 1973), AQSh, f. 509, v. 1973, d. 14, 92–6.

45. See Mëhilli, “Radio and Revolution,” 77.

46. Letter: [Anonymizedanonymized] to Radio Tirana (September 2, 1968), AQSh, f. 509, v. 1968, d. 16, 116.

47. Pistrick, “Listening to ‘the Human Without a Soul’,” 142–3.

48. Mëhilli, “Radio and Revolution,” 75.

49. QSL stands for “I confirm reception” in Q-Code, a code developed for early radio telecommunications.

50. Berg, Listening on the Short Waves, 330–63.

51. Letter: Dieter [anonymized] to Radio Tirana German Program (May 1968), AQSh, f. 509, v. 1968, d. 16, 10.

52. Letter: [anonymized] to Service de Radio Tirana (April 5, 1972), AQSh, f. 509, v. 1972, d. 13, 12–13.

53. Letter: Robin [anonymized] to Radio Tirana (November 7, 1973), AQSh, f. 509, v. 1973, d. 14, 133–4.

54. Letter: [anonymized] to Monsieur le Directeur de la Radio et Television Albanaise (October 15, 1973), AQSh, f. 509, v. 1973, d. 14, 130–1.

55. Letter: Gerd [anonymized] to Radio Tirana German Language Section (January 27, 1973), AQSh, f. 509, v. 1973, d. 14, 5.

56. Letter: Gerd [anonymized] to Radio Tirana German Language Section (January 27, 1973), 6.

57. The third issue of Ausgewählte Sendungen von Radio Tirana [Select broadcasts of Radio Tirana] contained a report on the sixth congress of the party of labour alongside stories from Angola, Brazil, West Germany, among others. See Ausgewählte Sendungen von Radio Tirana (January 15, 1972).

58. Mëhilli, “Radio and Revolution,” 84.

59. See for example Wolin, The Wind from the East. For a fascinating account of the Soviet strategies to win over European intellectuals travelling to the Soviet Union, see Stern, Western Intellectuals and the Soviet Union, 1920–40.

60. A few years later, the Albanian embassy in East Berlin would help distribute copies of Roter Morgen and support the establishment of the KPD/ML in East Germany. See ‘Betreff: Information über das Vertreiben der Zeitung KPD/ML durch die Botschaft der VRA,’ BArch, MfS, HA II, Nr. 35331, 37–9.

61. Letter: Editorial Board Rruga e Partisë to the Editorial Board Roter Morgen (April 28, 1969), AQSh, f. 14/APMP, KPD/ML, v. 1969, d. 1, 5–6.

62. Transcript: Conversation between Behar Shtylla, Assistant Secretary to the Central Committee of the PPSh and a Delegation of the KPD/ML, AQSh, f. 14/APMP, KPD/ML, v. 1970, d. 1, 1–22.

63. Transcript: Conversation between Enver Hoxha, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Albanian Party of Labour and a Delegation of the Communist Party of Germany (M-L) on 5 June 1974, AQSh, f. 14/APMP, KPD/ML, v. 1974, d. 4, 1–19.

64. Peter Platzmann, interview by Jochen Blanken, “Ein Zeitzeuge berichtet über 40 Jahre DAFG,” Deutsch-Albanische Freundschaftsgesellschaft, September 12, 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20120119084348/http://www.albanien-dafg.de/aus_der_dafg/interview_peter_platzmann.html.

65. Gnoinska, “Promoting the ‘China Way’ of Communism in Poland and beyond during the Sino-Soviet Split,” 354–6.

66. Compare §2 of the statute: “Satzung der Gesellschaft der Freunde Albaniens e.V.,” APO-Archiv, APO-KBW 056.

67. In 1975, for example, a local group from a competing Maoist party refused to advertise an event of the friendship society because, they claimed, it demanded that only people who supported Albanian socialism could become members. Although that competing party did support Albanian socialism, it thought that this was politically unwise, because friendship societies should be open to anyone. The federal board of the friendship society complained to the national leadership of said party, reaffirming that the Society was open to anyone who paid dues and supported the statute and the matter was eventually resolved. See Letter: Kommunistischer Bund Westdeutschland Ortsgruppe Bremen to Gesellschaft der Freunde Albaniens Gruppe Bremen (December 6, 1975), APO-Archiv, APO-KBW 056; Letter: Gesellschaft der Freunde Albaniens to Zentrale Leitung des Kommunistischen Bundes Westdeutschland (January 5, 1976 [misdated as 1975]), APO-Archiv, APO-KBW 056; Letter: Ortsleitung des KBW Bremen to Gesellschaft der Freunde Albaniens e.V. – Gruppe Bremen (February 18, 1976), APO-Archiv, APO-KBW 056.

68. “Bericht über die ‘Gesellschaft der Freunde Albaniens’,” APO-Archiv, APO-KBW 056.

69. “[anonymized in source] to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the KBW” (December 4, 1973), APO-Archiv, APO-KBW 056.

70. “Liebe Reiseinteressenten!,” APO-Archiv, APO-KBW 056.

71. “Gespräch mit einem Vertreter des albanischen Komitees für kulturelle und freundschaftliche Beziehungen mit dem Ausland” (September 1, 1972), APO-Archiv, APO-KBW 056, 1–2.

72. Letter: [anonymized] to the KBW’s Central Committee “Bericht über die Albanienreise einer GFA-Reisegruppe” (August 31, 1974), APO-Archiv, APO-KBW 056, 2.

73. Letter: [anonymized] to the KBW’s Central Committee “Bericht über die Albanienreise … ”.

74. Letter: Kommunistische Volkszeitung Redaktion to Ilse [anonymized], APO-Archiv, APO-KBW 056.

75. Letter: Editorial Board of the KVZ to [anonymized] (undated), APO-Archiv, APO-KBW 056.

76. Brown, West Germany and the Global Sixties, 113.

77. Letter: Herbert [anonymized] to Radio Tirana (April 18, 1973), AQSh, f. 509, v. 1973, d. 14, 73.

78. Letter: [Anonymous in Source] to Radio Tirana (October 3, 1972), AQSh, f. 509, v. 1972, d. 13, 43–4.

79. [Anonymous in Source] to Radio Tirana (June 1, 1973), AQSh, f. 509, v. 1973, d. 14, 80–1.

80. See for example Matin-Asgari, Iranian Student Opposition to the Shah, 135. In this sense, the 1970s continued a trend outlined in Slobodian, Foreign Front. See also Slobodian, “The Borders of the Rechtsstaat in the Arab Autumn.” A broader trend in the literature has also appeared on the ways in which European societies, but especially West Germany, deliberately obscured their multi-ethnic character in the 1970s. See Chin, The Crisis of Multiculturalism in Europe. But the work on transnational activism in the 1970s shows that, in addition to fairly deliberate efforts by European bureaucrats, actors who sought transnational engagement in many ways also inadvertently contributed to this obscuring.

81. Letter: [anonymized] to Radio Tirana (March 13, 1978), AQSh, f. 509, v. 1978, d. 35, 12.

82. Letter: [anonymized] to Radio Tirana (March 13, 1978).

83. Letter: Charles [anonymized] (October 15, 1978), AQSh, f. 509, v. 1978, d. 35, 17–18.

84. Deng, Speech by Chairman of the Delegation of the People’s Republic of China.

85. Lovell, Maoism, 227.

86. Ernst Aust, “Kampf der Wachsenden Kriegsgefahr durch die zwei Supermächte: Für die Einheit und Solidarität der Europäischen Völker,” Roter Morgen, April 5, 1975, 6–7.

87. Joscha Schmierer, “Ein gefährlicher Irrweg: Propagandierung der Vaterlandsverteidigung in der Im- perialistischen Bundesrepublik,” Kommunistische Volkszeitung, April 24, 1975, 8. See also Joscha Schmierer, “Verteidigung des BRD-Imperialismus: Gruppe Roter Morgen auf halben Weg zurück,” Kommunistische Volkszeitung, May 22, 1975, 16. For a response accusing the KBW of having taken the side of the Soviet Union, see “KBW – Führer: Mit Linken Phrasen im Interesse des Sozialimperialismus,” Roter Morgen, May 17, 1975, 5. For a detailed discussion of this debate see Benicke, Von Adorno Zu Mao.

88. “Diplomatische Beziehungen der VR China und Chile,” Kommunistische Volkszeitung, November 22, 1973, 12.

89. Uwe Kräuter, “Gespräch vom 6.9.75 über Außenpolitik,” APO-Archiv, APO-KBW 037, 2–3.

90. On this point, see Kelley and Esch, “Black like Mao.” In some ways, Maoism in its organized form inherited this tension from the 1960s movements inspired by anti-colonial revolutions. See for example Hosek, “Subaltern Nationalism.”

91. I am indebted here to Gary Wilder’s concept of a determining contradiction between nationalism and universalism that simultaneously enables and constrains fields of possible political positions. See Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State.

92. Scales, Cause at Heart, chapter 6.

93. Biberaj, Albania and China, 122.

94. Hoxha, Report on the Activity of the Central Committee of the Party of Labour of Albania, 200, 171.

95. “Genosse Enver Hoxha empfängt Delegationen der marxistisch-leninistischen Parteien und Organisationen,” Roter Morgen, November 13, 1976, 2.

96. Biberaj, Albania and China, 123.

97. The editorial first appeared in the Albanian Zëri i Popullit on July 7, 1977. On July 15 of that year, it appeared in the KPD/ML’s paper. “Theorie und Praxis der Revolution,” Roter Morgen, July 15, 1977.

98. “Analyse der Erfassung, Auswertung und Aufbereitung politisch-operativ bedeutsamer Erkenntnisse über maoistische und trotzkistische Organisationen, Gruppen und Kräfte,” BArch, MfS, BV Berlin, AGK, Nr. 4386, 100, 43.

99. Ibid., 101.

100. Ibid., 108

101. Ibid., 104.

102. Confederation of Iranian Students (National Union) “Einladung zum 18. Weltkongreß der CISNU,” APO-Archiv, APO-KBW 003.

103. “Protokoll zu den Vorfällen beim CISNU ‘World Congress’” (March 4, 1978), APO-Archiv, APO-KBW 003.

104. The Board for International Broadcasting, “1983 Annual Report,” 2.

105. Biweekly Plans for the Newsrooms West, East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, AQSh, f. 509, v. 1983, d. 33, 44. See the respective articles “HDW Hamburg besetzt,” Roter Morgen, September 16, 1938, 1; “Solidarität mit den HDW-Arbeitern,” Roter Morgen, September 16, 1983, 1; “Widerstand auf den Werften,” Roter Morgen, September 16, 1983, 2.

106. See Mëhilli, “Radio and Revolution,” 75.

107. See Spreen, “Radical Protest or Shadow Diplomacy.” For the broader context of Maoism in divided Germany, see also Spreen “Dear Comrade Mugabe.”

Additional information

Funding

Funding for the research leading to this article has been provided by the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin, the Central European History Society, as well as the Department of History and the Rackham School of Graduate Studies at the University of Michigan. Conclusions and mistakes are mine.

Notes on contributors

David Spreen

David Spreen is a historian of modern Germany with research interests in the inter-/transnational entanglements of decolonization, the global Cold War, and the broad social and cultural transformations of the postcolonial period. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at Harvard University. Spreen holds a PhD from the University of Michigan and an MA from the University of Chicago. His current book project is based on his doctoral dissertation, “Dear Comrade Mugabe: Decolonization and Radical Protest in Divided Germany, 1960–1980.”